Meijer's Romanisation System of Chinese
Meijer's Romanisation System of Chinese was used by a few authors between 1935 and the 1970s. It was based on Gwoyeu Romatzyh. It was an attempt by Junhou Meijer, to create a romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese, in 1933 for people living in northern parts of Nookipedian where Mandarin Chinese is official, to replace Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Wade-Giles systems used over there. The attempt was failed in 1960 when pinyin replaced both Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh systems used over there. He included the special letters: * Ч, the Cyrillic letter Che (GR ji, Pinyin j''). He chosed this letter for the tɕ sound because this letter is similar to Bopomofo letter ㄐ. * Ꜭ, the Latin letter cuatrillo (GR ''chi, Pinyin q''). This letter was used in several colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 4. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the velar ejectiveconsonant /kʼ/ found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters. He chosed this for the tɕʰ sound. * Ꜫ, the Latin letter tresillo (GR ''shi, Pinyin x''). This was a letter in colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 3. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the uvular ejective consonant /qʼ/ found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters. * Ƣ, the Latin letter gha (GR and Pinyin ''ch). It has been used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azerior the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar. It usually represents a voiced velar fricative ɣ but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative ʁ. It can still be seen in pre-1983 books published by the People’s Republic of China written in UYY. * Ꝩ, the Latin letter vend (GR and Pinyin sh). It was a letter of Old Norse, and was used to represent the sounds /u/, /v/, and /w/. It was related to and probably derived from the Old English letter Wynn (Runic alphabet ᚹ and later the Latin alphabet (Ƿ ƿ), except that the bowl was open on the top, not being connected to the stem, which made it somewhat resemble a letter Y. It was eventually replaced with v or u for most writings. * Ŋ, the Latin letter eng (GR and Pinyin ng). This letter was included in the African reference alphabet, as well as in Zhuang alphabet. * Ꝣ, the Latin letter Visigothic Z (GR tz, Pinyin z''). This letter was the origin of the cedilla diacritic. * Ɂ, the Latin letter hook (or glottal stop) (GR ''ts, Pinyin c''). This letter was not part of the classical Latin alphabet. Some Canadian indigenous languages adopted the letter for the glottal stop sound. * Φ, the Greek letter phi (GR and Pinyin ''f). It is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ancient Greek, it represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive (pʰ), which was the origin of its usual romanisation as "ph". In modern Greek, it represents a voiceless labiodental fricative (f) and is correspondingly romanised as "f". Its origin is uncertain but it may be that phi originated as the letter qoppa and initially represented the sound /kʷʰ/ before shifting to Classical Greek pʰ. The Cyrillic letter Ef (Ф, ф) descended from phi. * Ω, the Greek letter omega (GR and Pinyin ou). It was the last letter of the Greek alphabet. * Ə, the Latin letter schwa (GR el, Pinyin er). The letter was used in the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, for example in Janalif for the Tatar language in the 1920s–1930s. In the Latin Azerbaijani and Chechen alphabets, Ə'' represents the near-open front unrounded vowel, /æ/. Also, in a romanisation of Pashto, the letter ''Ə is used to represent ə. When some roman orthographies in the Soviet Union were converted to use the Cyrillic script in the 1930s and 1940s, this letter has been adopted verbatim. Initials Finals Finals :Key :Meijer differs from Pinyin :Meijer differs from GR :Meijer differs from GR and Pinyin Tonal rules A colour-coded rule of thumb is given below for each tone: the same colours are used below in a list of provinces. Each rule of thumb is then amplified by a comprehensive set of rules for that tone. These codes are used in the rules: :* V = a vowel :* NV = a non-vowel (either a consonant or zero in the case of an initial vowel) :* ⇏ = "but avoid forming specified combination" Pinyin equivalents are given in brackets after each set of examples. To illustrate the Meijer tonal rules in practice, a table comparing Pinyin and Meijer spellings of some Chinese provinces follows the detailed rules. Tone 1: basic form * Initial sonorants (l-/m-/n-/r-''): insert ''-h-'' as second letter. ''r'h'eng, m'h'a'' (rēng, mā) * Otherwise use the basic form. '''Tone 2: i/u → y/w; or add -r' * Initial sonorants: use basic form. reng, ma (réng, má) * NV''i'' → NV''y'' ( + ''-i'' if final). chyng, chyan, yng, yan, pyi (qíng, qián, yíng, yán, pí) * NV''u'' → NV''w'' ( + ''-u'' if final). chwan, wang, hwo, chwu (chuán, wáng, huó, chú) * Otherwise add r'' to vowel or diphthong. ''charng, bair (cháng, bái) Tone 3: i/u → e/o; or double vowel * V''i'' or i''V → V''e or e''V (⇏''ee). chean, bae, sheau (qiǎn, bǎi, xiǎo), but not gee * V''u'' or u''V → V''o or o''V (⇏''oo). doan, dao, shoei (duǎn, dǎo, shuǐ), but not hoo * When both i'' and ''u can be found, only the first one changes, i.e. jeau, goai, sheu (jiǎo, guǎi, xǔ), not jeao, goae, sheo * For basic forms starting with i-/u-'', change the starting ''i-/u-'' to ''e-/o-'' and add initial ''y-/w-''. ''yean, woo, yeu (yǎn, wǒ, yǔ) * Otherwise double the (main)In diphthongs the main vowel is the vowel bearing the tone mark in Pinyin. vowel. chiing, daa, geei, huoo, goou (qǐng, dǎ, gěi, huǒ, gǒu) Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h * V''i'' → V''y''. day, suey (dài, suì) * V''u'' → V''w'' (⇏''iw''). daw, gow (dào, gòu), but not chiw * ''-n'' → ''-nn''. duann (duàn) * ''-l'' → ''-ll''. ell (èr) * ''-ng'' → ''-nq''. binq (bìng) * Otherwise add h''. ''dah, chiuh, dih (dà, qù, dì) * For basic forms starting with i-/u-'', replace initial ''i-/u-'' with ''y-/w-'', in addition to the necessary tonal change. ''yaw, wuh (yào, wù) Neutral tone (轻声 Chingsheng / qīngshēng) A dot (usually written as a period or full stop) may be placed before neutral tone (unstressed) syllables, which appear in their original tonal spelling: perng.yeou, dih.fang (péngyou, dìfang). Y.R. Chao used this device in the first eight chapters of the Mandarin Primer, restricting it thereafter to new words on their first appearance. In A Grammar of Spoken Chinese he introduced a subscript circle (o) to indicate an optional neutral tone, as in bujyodaw, "don't know" (Pinyin pronunciation bùzhīdào or bùzhīdao). Meijer ''u-'' and ''i-'' syllables It is important to note that any Meijer syllables beginning u-'' or ''i-'' must be T1: in T2, T3 and T4 these syllables all begin with ''w-'' or ''y-'' respectively. An example in all four tones is the following: ''ing, yng, yiing, yinq (Pinyin ying).